University Essay: Challenges to the Common Good in Australia

This opinion essay focuses on the challenges faced by online organizations, particularly in the context of promoting human rights and achieving the common good. The essay uses the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights as a case study, highlighting the organization's commitment to protecting vulnerable groups like the LGBTQ community, refugees, and indigenous communities. It explores the difficulties encountered by the organization, especially the opposition from right-wing elements and the challenges of social media platforms. The essay argues that realizing the aspirations of the common good is difficult for human rights organizations and highlights the importance of these organizations' work in society.

Running head: THE COMMON GOOD
The Common Good
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

The common good refers to what is beneficial or shared by all members that are living in
a community and which is something that is often achieved through what may be termed as
collective action. Common good is aimed at improving the lives of people. It is directed at
bettering the lives of human beings and the actions that are undertaken by human rights
organizations and NGO’s are often referred to actions that aim at achieving the aspirations of the
common good, as such actions are meant for improving the quality of life of all people living in
society (Knowles et al, 2018). This opinion essay is going to focus on the role played by online
organizations in the promotion of human rights and the challenges that online organizations are
faced with when it comes to the realization of the aspirations of the common good.
Australian Lawyers for Human Rights is an organization that is committed to the cause of
rights issues especially those that pertain to the protection of vulnerable groups of people. The
organization carries out most of its work online through its website accessing which will give
people an idea of the rights issues that the organization has been working tirelessly for. This is
also an organization that is seen to work quite tirelessly for the protection of LGBTQ issues and
it has taken part in many events where it has been an open advocate for the same. Yet I will say
that it is fair to point out that this is an organization that has been faced with a number of
challenges, especially since it does most of its advocacy work and makes use of social media
platforms like Facebook and Twitter quite extensively for this purpose. Social media is
something that I have seen give people the scope to be quite candid in their views and opinions
of others especially when they don’t agree with a specific mode of action or behavior. The work
that is done by Australian Lawyers for Human Rights is work that is directed at achieving the
aspirations of the common good. This is an organization which works tirelessly for the
attainment of human security and human rights by agitating for the cause of refugees, members

of the LGBTQ community and also members of the indigenous communities of Australia and in
the process of doing so it has dealt with a lot of opposition. Right wing elements in Australian
society do not agree with the work that is being done by this organization and have been
agitating quite actively for the work of the organization not to be met with success. Moves that
are made by the organization to protect the rights of refugees and vulnerable people like sexual
minorities both in the vicinity of Sydney and beyond are met with a considerable degree of
opposition because of the fact that these are not approved by members of the right wing, a
political division that is currently enjoying majority rule in Australia (Nethery & Holman, 2016).
I have known friends who worked for this organization and I have been told more than
once how difficult it is for them to get their work done without facing a lot of criticism and
opposition for this purpose. At times the slander and the abuse that members of this organization
have faced online on social media platform has been too great and there are instances when some
of them even feared for their lives because of the terrible messages that they have received
because of the work that they do (Arjoon et al., 2018).
In my view therefore realizing the aspirations of the common good appears to be quite a
difficult thing to do for human rights organizations, especially online organizations that play
quite an active role in spreading knowledge and information about the spread of human rights. I
have seen and I believe that this should not deter them from the work that they do, given that the
common good is aimed at the benefit of all in society, and that society would remain severely
regressive and backward if the practice of the common good was never engaged in by rights
organizations, among others

References
Arjoon, S., Turriago-Hoyos, A., & Thoene, U. (2018). Virtuousness and the Common Good as a
Conceptual Framework for Harmonizing the Goals of the Individual, Organizations, and
the Economy. Journal of Business Ethics, 147(1), 143-163.
Knowles, R. T., & Clark, C. H. (2018). How common is the common good? Moving beyond
idealistic notions of deliberative democracy in education. Teaching and Teacher
Education, 71, 12-23.
Nethery, A., & Holman, R. (2016). Secrecy and human rights abuse in Australia’s offshore
immigration detention centres. The International Journal of Human Rights, 20(7), 1018-
1038